Giants enjoy bowling night for bonding

Coach Tom Coughlin suprised the team with a night off to go bowling in NYC

It was 19 days into training camp, and Tom Coughlin thought his team needed a change of pace.

So, as he’s known to do, the head coach told his players he scheduled a guest speaker for 5:15 on Tuesday night. One by one, they filed into the auditorium at the Quest Diagnostics Training Center with their stomachs full from dinner and minds racing from the day’s practice.

“They showed a clip of a guy bowling,” wide receiver Rueben Randle recalled. “And we were like, ‘What is a bowling guy going to teach us?’ And then [director of player development] Charles [Way] told us about going bowling as a team at 5:30.”

Meanwhile, four buses hummed out in the players’ parking lot.

“They were outside waiting for us, and everybody was kind of looking around like, ‘Is he serious?’” wide receiver Victor Cruz said. “I personally felt like we were being punked.”

They weren’t.

Within 15 minutes, 90 players and staff were loaded up and on their way into Manhattan. A short time later, they arrived at Frames Bowling Lounge, and it was time to unwind.

“It’s a great team bonding event,” Way, a former Giants player, said. “Coach always likes to do things like this, especially with the new guys that we have on our team. We want to introduce them to the culture and the environment that we’ve established over the past 10 years, and I think we’re doing a good job. Everyone is having fun, coach is letting the guys see him in a different environment, and I think this is going to be a real positive for the team.”

The Giants also recently saw Eli Manning in a different light with his DIRECTV “Football on Your Phone” commercial. Somehow, some way, the video made its way onto the dozens of screens and speakers in the alley at one point in the night.

“I don’t know, I can’t say, I can’t say – no snitching,” said veteran cornerback Corey Webster, not giving up who put it on. “I can’t say that. We got to see how he acts with the team being behind him with it playing. We got a good laugh out if it. He had fun with it.”